Checkup time!

Arabella is declared perfect, at least by her doctor. She is 95th percentile on height, 50th percentile on weight, which is a relief, since she looks so skinny, we thought she might be too thin. I know many parents would love to have the problem of worrying that their preschooler is too thin, but it gets frustrating to try to find pants that fit. And I don't just mean are a bit short in the leg, but actually fall off her skinny little bum. She can (and does) wear pants for 18 month olds, but they are about knee length. She can wear size 6 dresses but they look weirdly w i d e. Like those ads for Jenny Craig with the lady wearing her size 88 dress over her current size 12 body. Good thing she likes dresses, I just buy them large.

Indiana is having a drought. I didn't know that the midwest has droughts -- my mass-mediated perception of the area was tornados and floods, but this is news to me. The lawns look dry, and our backyard has a crunchy-ness I associate more with August than mid-June. I have been watering my tomatoes and other fruit and flower bearing plants in defiance of the lawn watering "request," but I have at least the water-sense (honed by years of living in Southern California) to water at dusk, so that the water soaks in rather than evaporates. And I am not using a sprinkler at all. M has been using the water from the dehumidifier in the basement to water the baby trees (aka "sticks"), too bad we can't find some easier way of getting the water from our basement into the flower beds.

And on knitting I am onto the last of the cotton baby sweater extravaganza (although I may need to make more, as I have plenty of lime green cotton-ease), and this is the gold and black for the Steelers fans in our friend-clan. Little William will be the trendsetter for baby Pittsburgh fans. Next will be making a Debbie Bliss merino wool baby sweater for the Bean in soft lavender. I actually had someone who thought, when I told her the black & gold sweater was the 5th one I was making this season, that I was making them ALL for my own baby. I'm not that obsessive or greedy. Really I'm not.